David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. How is the Albanese government lifting permanent migration to bring in the critical workers our economy desperately needs?

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Bean for his friendship and his brilliant advocacy for his community. This is a matter which he has raised with me consistently, because it is affecting the people that he represents as well as all of us in this chamber.

On Thursday and Friday of last week the Prime Minister brought together groups of Australians from right across the country, from every possible corner of our country, to talk about some of the issues that matter most to us. Those 140 people came here because, like the rest of Australia, they are desperate to draw a line under a decade in which nothing that really matters to us really got moved forward.

Some of the people who were in that room have been in conflict for decades. But we heard a really clear message from Australians at the election, and that is, as the Prime Minister said, they want us to get out of the trenches. They want us to work together, because the issues that are facing our constituents are bigger than any of our political parties.

It was fantastic to have at the summit people like the Leader of the National Party, there making a contribution, trying to defend and protect the interests of his constituents. The Leader of the Australian Greens was there, the crossbench were there—everyone except those opposite—who are trying to make a difference to this country, together in one conversation.

We face a skills crisis, which is very significantly affecting the lives of Australians. We've got nurses in our community who have been pulling double and triple shifts for two years. They just can't do it anymore. We've got a teaching sector, led by my friend the Minister for Education, where teachers are leaving the sector in droves because they just can't put up with the staffing shortages anymore. We've got people in the regional electorates, represented around this chamber, where fruit is rotting on vines because there is no-one to go and pick it and get it onto supermarket shelves.

As Labor people our focus is always on trying to get Australians into these jobs, and we do face a very special opportunity to bring people who have been marginalised from work into the workforce, and I want to thank the Minister for Social Services for her work on this. But even if we do all of those things, we are going to have a shortfall of labour in this country of many, many thousands.

That's why a decision was made at the summit that this year's permanent skilled migration rate will lift from 160,000 people to 195,000 people. It's going to mean thousands more nurses for our health system in this year. It's going to mean thousands more workers into our regions to help with the acute crises there. It'll mean 31,000 workers to state and territory allocations going straight into our hospitals, our infrastructure projects and our schools.

What I really would have appreciated and what I think is in the spirit of the moment is full participation across this chamber. We didn't quite get there, but I want to thank everyone in this chamber who came along, who pulled the weight of the nation with them and worked together to get those great 36 outcomes that we got from the summit.